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Genre: Dark Ambient

Much like my previous dark ambient track, Delumination, this song is composed of just a few simple elements: A piano, a guitar, a mandolin, and some samples. The piano is playing an arpeggio of two chords repeated through the length of the song… but only really audible at the very beginning. Although you can barely hear it in the remainder of the track, it is making its presence known by driving the two different 30-second reverbs that I use to create the “blanket of sound” that holds everything else together. It shares this duty with the totally inaudible 808 kick that adds lows to the resulting sonic glue.

Yes, there really is an 808 in this song that you absolutely cannot hear, but if I took it out the song would sound vastly different.

The mandolin is pitch shifted down so low that it becomes a bass guitar. Because why not. It is playing a two-note bass line with occasional embellishments that are themselves quite simple.
The lead guitar is playing a different arpeggio of the same chords as the piano, BUT with the scale simplified from E-Phrygian to E-Pentatonic.

Next, I added four sections of heavily mangled samples and sound effects that are intended to portray… something. I’ll leave that as an exercise for the listener. The title is relevant.

That WOULD be it… if I wasn’t iconDARK. But I am, so I removed the guitar, mixed/mastered the remaining track, exported it, reversed it and swapped the left/right channels to create an auditory mirror of the original, and fed it back into the DAW so that it played on top of the source track.

You are literally hearing the same song (minus the guitar) forwards and backwards simultaneously.

Then I put the guitar back and now you have “The Horror of Our Ways”. The reverse bass mandolin is probably the defining quality that resulted from this little experiment, and I quite like it. There are also the scattered bits where I unexpectedly distort the reversed track to create the auditory equivalent of looking into a funhouse mirror. Why? Because I’m iconDARK. Or is it DARKicon?

I hope you enjoy it.

If you have trouble listening on dsound you can listen on the following platforms:

Choon: https://choon.co/tracks/0l2mlvc8hzo/the-horror-of-our-ways/
Musicoin: https://musicoin.org/embedded-player/0x5f06dcf43c2be624f031357e7a8b48d756789142

FOLLOW iconDARK

More about iconDARK:

I like what I like; I make what I make.

My electronic instrumentals range from eerie dark ambient to rock-influenced electronica to bass-heavy breakbeat. I refuse to limit myself to just one subgenre. The one unifying thread throughout my work stems from my lifelong love of imaginative fiction, horror movies, and tales of the paranormal… all of which make their way into the titles and themes of my music.

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